Stability of plane MHD shock waves in an ideal gas (Q1315657)

For the first time we detected the instability of fast MHD shocks in cases in which the magnetic field ahead of the wave is almost normal and the initial gas dynamic pressure is several times smaller than the magnetic pressure. Then waves that rotate the field through a near- maximum angle are unstable. Slow MHD shocks are unstable over a broad range of the governing parameters. Increasing the initial gas dynamic pressure suppresses the instability of slow waves ahead of which the angle between the field and the normal is small or close to \(\pi/2\). However, there is an interval of initial angles of inclination of the field on which for a fixed wave intensity the instability cannot be suppressed by an arbitrary increase in the initial gas dynamic pressure.